 We're here at ITU Telecom World 2015 in Budapest, Hungary, and I'm very pleased to be joined by Aline Cabatende, who is CEO of Rwanda Online. Aline, thank you very much for being with us in the studio today. Thank you for having me. Now, I'd like to start off by asking you a little bit about Rwanda Online, actually. Can you tell us a little bit about how it started and what it's about? So Rwanda Online is a private technology company that is in a private public partnership with the government of Rwanda. The mandate of our company is to build an e-government portal, and so the vision is to simplify government service delivery to citizens of Rwanda, and by putting all government services on one online portal, we're hoping that citizens no longer have to make a number of trips. So of course, in a country that doesn't have a lot of internet penetration, this is not only putting services online. So we are looking at putting services on mobile phones, on feature phones. We are looking at putting service delivery agents around the country, and so citizens no longer have to walk very long distances to sector offices to get services, but can find an agent to support them close to their homes or to their businesses without paying an extra fee, so they can get support. And we as Rwanda Online and the government take care of that cost. And in terms of the government involvement, what's the Rwandan government's role in providing an ecosystem in which ICT startups can thrive and are there any lessons for other countries as well? That is a very tough question because there's a lot of things the government has done. So the number one thing that the government did maybe 10 years ago is lay a backbone of fiber network around the country. So by doing this, they were putting in place the infrastructure to invite the kind of players that Rwanda needed, which is telecom operators. Actually ironically, Rwanda and government supported the entry of the first telecom operator because at the time the market didn't look as lucrative. So with the infrastructure in place, which is the national fiber network, building a 4G, putting in place a 4G network, they were able to attract more players into the market. So that's one, which is infrastructure side. The other side is skills development, where there's a very big focus on the development of technical skills and so boosting the capacity of the universities to be able to provide practical education as opposed to simply theoretical education. And so the skills development is a very big part and it's also a training of various players in the market, which is government, private sector, through different partnerships and development partners. The other one is supporting access to finance, which to be honest is still a problem, but there's been a lot of drive from collaboration of the government and the private sector federation to provide the kind of financing for nations, startup entrepreneurs to be able to go to the next level. Because a lot of times they don't have the collateral for bank loans or that kind of financing, give them the kind of money that they need, the training, the mentoring. And one of the channels that's being used is the Knowledge Hub in Rwanda, KLab, which is a tech hub that has been used to bring together young minds with ideas, provide them with mentoring, shared services, and avenues for financing. And then when they are developed and more mature, they can fly, they can fly from the nest and take it on. So the government has played a big role in all of this. Yeah, so that's most of what they've done. I've been told that you've spoken about the importance of changing the culture, including a cool factor that is developed in Rwanda around taking risks and losing the fear of failure. Can you tell us more about that and why that's important? So I mean I just pulled out the word cool factor in the talk, but it's a culture of taking risks that was not very strong before, coming from a culture that was more risk averse to changing the mindset. And that's been done in different ways. One is through these communities that are coming together, for example, at the tech hub that I mentioned, young people coming together, getting mentorship from more experienced entrepreneurs who have been through it, who have understood that to get to success, you build on a primitive failure. And to begin to see that failure is not necessarily a bad thing. It's more you're trying, it's experimenting and learning. Another way that I think is very key is in the universities. So today in the universities, there is a number of communities that are bringing together students to experiment with their ideas, to come and talk about their ideas, to try and build and fail. And I think it's a very key time because you're in your third year of school, what do you have to lose? By the time you get out of school, you begin to appreciate what this, what failure, failure code in code, is teaching you. And that's something that's being done in different areas. But it's something that's new because in Rwanda before you took a job, you got out of school and you took a job and you do not go and failure was not viewed to be a good thing. But now it's, I wouldn't call it maybe cool, but it's okay to fail. It's okay to learn. It's okay to grow. And then at some point, you can use the lessons learned to build something successful. Yeah. And finally, you're here at ITU Telecom World in Budapest. Obviously, it's an investment in terms of time and costs and everything else. I just wanted to know for you, what's the value of attending this event? Oh, building my network, one, learning. I feel over the past three days, I have learned so much. Just being able to come here, knowing what's in my environment, but meeting different people from different walks of life who have either done something similar or not even. People have not done the same thing. And being able to draw those lessons and say, okay, how can I take what I've learned and applied to what we're doing in Rwanda, especially since the company that I work for is new. And what we're doing is new. Not only in Rwanda, it's new in sub-Saharan Africa. And so, yeah, that's why we come here. I also did have a few speaking opportunities. So an opportunity to share what we're doing. And so that was also a privilege for me to come and do that here. Yeah. Well, thanks very much for coming and speaking here in the studio. And wish you the very best in the future with your projects and everything else that you're doing. Thank you very much for having me. I mean, Captain, thank you. Thank you.